travels through stone walls

I will travel to You, Lord, through a thousand blind alleys.
You want to bring me to You through stone walls.
                                                  - Thomas Merton

The blind alleys...

The blind alleys are all of my "personal programs for happiness" as Thomas Keating is fond of putting it. They are all of the methods and manners I use to try and set things right and make things work out, mostly for myself. And, inevitably, they are all to be found lacking. This is because they are typically based on those cords of connection I have chosen to create between myself and all of those things I've decided to identify with: vocation, titles, roles, opinions, judgments, ideologies, political positions, theological assumptions....and on and on.

My blind alleys may appear quite exemplary and magnanimous on their exterior -- service to others, well spoken words, lofty ideals, to name a few. They may even seem terribly holy, at least to me. However, if I pursue these paths in some effort to earn favor or love, to be deemed acceptable, or to earn some divine right, then I have missed the mark.  To "miss the mark" is the most literal meaning of sin. It is to live without authenticity or truth. It is to live unaware and asleep.

If we wish to awaken and to deepen our life in love, then it is to the stone walls that God asks us to turn.

The stone walls...

The stone walls are not too difficult to find. They are the people I am most resistant to welcoming into my heart. They are the moments I am most eager to avoid. These are the people I am called to meet and the places I am invited go in love. Not love as some kind of warm feeling of affection or attraction. Who can be expected to feel that for the person who has just pushed our buttons?! Such feelings are too fleeting.

No, this is True Love: the force that is unleashed when I remember that my life is an extension of the One Life. Love is a power that emerges when we awaken to the truth that we do not live for ourselves alone. None of us are "self made."  In fact, such a reality is utterly impossible because of the simple fact our life is woven into the fabric of all Life, all Being, all Love.

Therefore, the person we may most wish to banish from our life today may be our greatest teacher. The moment we may most want to avoid tomorrow may be a doorway to our deepening.

May God bring us through our stone walls, whatever they may be.